From Roe v. Wade
to lesbianism to birth control, women’s liberation movements have made it their
platform to give women a right over their own bodies.

Some good and
some not so good have come out if it. But fast forward to today, and we see
that women are once again in a fight for liberation.

But this time,
it is a personal fight and one that is more often fought all alone. In the last
ten years especially, our culture of sexually provocative advertising and media
have aided in the trans- formation of women from sexually submissive into
sexually aggressive...and sexually obsessed.

As such, this is
resulting in a rapidly growing addiction to pornography and sexual promiscuity
among women today.

I just had my first class for the semester at Vanguard University. I teach a class on Addictive Behavior in their graduate psychology program. It's a fun class to teach, but I've noticed an interesting thing over the past five years since I started teaching.

Every semester, the students are getting more and more zombie-like during class. Every semester, I am seeing more faces staring at their computer screens during class intead of paying attention (probably facebooking or emailing as opposed to writing notes). Or texting on their phone. Or otherwise multi-tasking or engaging in technological brain-numb while I'm talking.

Now I realize that they could be doing this because my lectures are incredibly boring. I''d like to think I'm a dynamic and funny professor, but am humble enough to acknowledge that is a possibility that I just plain suck. But in talking to other professors, this "zoning out" thing seems to be a university-wide epidemic. It's gotten so bad that there was some serious discussion amongst the faculty as to how to deal with it.

Tonight is Christmas Eve and I find myself facing the first Christmas in recent memory, maybe ever, that I wish was over before it began. I'm not bah humbug, nor am I falling apart sad. I am just not feeling it. Not interested. Indifferent.

Part of it has to do with the loss of both of my parents this year. Those of you who may have read my piece on Stages of Grief know that they died at ages 67 and 65 within 20 days of one another in April. He from a stroke and she from cancer. Loss and Christmas can be difficult to reconcile.

Part of it has to do with watching one of my children struggle with the first sober Christmas and all that entails for the addict that is turning their life around. I remember that feeling from my first sober Christmas a number of years ago and I wish this child well. Sobriety, depression and Christmas can be difficult to reconcile.